Acela Accident

An Amtrak Acela train -- just recently back in operation -- hit a car in Connecticut on Wednesday, crushing the car and killing two of the passengers, reports CNN.com.

Atlanta Belt Line

Creative Loafing Atlanta has a series of articles on the proposed belt line, which would take a 22 mile loop around downtown of underutilized railroad right-of-way and convert it into transit, parks, walking paths and bikeways. The first big hurdle is passing a Tax Allocation District for the area to finance any bonds that will be used over the next 25 years to pay for the project. Basically, some amount of property taxes would be used to finance the bonds, and so all the recipients of property tax funds have to agree on giving a little bit up.

I've been unable to find it, but Metropolis Magazine had a good piece with in the past few years about different options for transit expansion in the Central Atlanta area. Using these existing loop railroad rights-of-way was part of it. The good: the right-of-way exists and can be acquired in large chunks, it hits a good distribution of neighborhoods, it can be connected to the existing transit system - although with some difficulty. The bad: there would be little guaranteed ridership for much of this system, development patterns in Atlanta would need to shift towards more density and walkability over a large area for the transit part of this project to be successful, the financing scheme is untested.

Speculative transit investment is a rare thing in this country anymore. Most transit built these days is to more efficiently move around people in already crowded downtown areas. While this belt line is not exactly being proposed in the middle of nowhere, it is interesting in that it is really being pitched as an economic development and urbanization project - something to finally give critical mass and life to the center of Atlanta. It seems that once the parks and transit are finally completed, a center of Atlanta will have been physically demarcated, something to finally counteract the massive sprawl that otherwise characterizes this city.

Evacuation by train

Otis White of Governing magazine has a piece in the free portion of the New York Times op-ed section about how high-speed rail could be useful in an evacuation:

If local and federal authorities had worked with Amtrak to make better use of its trains in New Orleans, thousands could have been evacuated before the worst of Katrina hit. And if Houston had gone ahead with earlier proposals to develop high-speed rail links, the same might have been true there.

After watching video of people stuck at the Superdome and Convention Center in New Orleans and on the highways of Houston, this sounds like a good idea. After all, who wouldn't be in favor of another way out of town?

The reason this logic is faulty for the same reason that evacuation by airlift is unfeasable. Compared to the number of people who take buses, trains and cars as commuters every day, the number of people who travel between cities is very, very small. At most, a viable intercity rail system would evacuate a few thousand people per day, assuming that evacuees can make it to the downtown train station on foot, since buses and cabs would be better utilized getting people out of town, not around it.

Commuter rail is a better option in evacuation situations because it has the rolling stock and redundancy to move large numbers of people from multiple convenient points. Since nearly all commuter lines hook up with intercity freight and passenger lines, they could move many more people out of harm's way from all over a city, clearing the roads to some extent.

This is, of course, predicated on the existence of evacuation plans that make it clear where and when to show up for a bus or train out of town.

iPod subway maps draw legal threats

New York and San Francisco transit officials have cracked down on a website that chopped up transit maps and offered them in a format that fits on an iPod.

I saw this coming. The maps are copyrighted. As BART said in a letter, there is a common belief that documents from public entities are not subject to copyright. Generally this is not true. Under federal law, works from the U.S. government are "works of the United States" and not subject to copyright. However, other governments are free to copyright their works, and so every official transit map I have ever seen is copyrighted. This is why non-official websites with transit maps, such as Stationmasters and nycsubway.org, drew up their own maps. (Of course these are copyrighted too! nycsubway says they don't allow reproduction of their map, so don't bother asking! However, they do offer a link to a public domain subway map by SPUI.)

But it is incredibly stupid of transit agencies to restrict use of their maps. Here is a guy who did all the work of porting the maps and arranging for a site to host them. The transit agencies get free publicity and distribution of their maps in a convenient format that may appeal to new riders. Some riders might forego paper maps, saving the agencies money. Why do they want to stop him from distributing the maps--so the transit agencies can get piddly licensing fees?

Besides, from a public policy standpoint, it seems foolhardy to me to restrict the redistribution of public documents, that were paid for with tax dollars and with fares from the public.

I think that Congress or state legislatures should pass laws declaring that no document from a public agency shall be subject to copyright.

Hybrid Buses for WMATA

WMATA has purchased 50 hybrid-powered buses at a cost of %520k each, reports the Examiner.

Seattle monorail project on the ropes

See Slashdot page. There is also a good discussion on the page which addresses a question I have always had: what is supposed to be so great about a monorail? Why not just take standard gauge, two-rail equipment (which has been debugged) and use that, rather than a less common technology? Is it because monorail seems more "high-tech" because it's in Disneyworld? Well, I still don't have any firm answers to these questions, but the talk on the page sheds a little light on the issue--it is said that monorails are quieter, for example. (Somehow this I doubt. I live right next to a railroad track just outside Washington, and the electric trains are very quiet. They're loud only when they roll over switches, and I doubt this is untrue for monorails.)

100-mile backups as Texans evacuate for storm

Maybe eventually they'll figure out that putting everyone in cars is not the most practical way to evacuate a city. Officials said they did not plan for all this congestion.

Malfunctions

A train on WMATA's Red Line separated yesterday--it pulled apart right on the tracks.

As the investigation of the Metra train derailment continues, the engineer said he saw a clear signal, which is why he was proceeding at about 70 mph rather than the 10 mph required to switch tracks.

Meanwhile, 60 passengers fled a fire in the ceiling of a CTA bus.

A little less chaos in California: a proposed BART extension to Silicon Valley will draw more riders than previously projected. However, it will also cost more money.

For the fashion-conscious commuter

Given the post below, you may be better off using your WMATA bus pass as jewlery.

Maybe they should put a picture of the bus on a milk carton

D.C. blogger N.M. has horror stories about long waits for the L2 bus two days in a row, the latter of which reveals a strange quirk in WMATA's bus management: If a driver doesn't answer a call on the radio (which isn't really surprising, apparently) the agency sends someone out in a car to drive the route and look for buses.

This leads to another question: If they're running the route because a rider has complained about a lack of buses, why don't they just give a free ride to the complainer?

Two dead in Chicago commuter train derailment

The Metra train was traveling from Joliet to Chicago when it derailed, killing two. Details.

UPDATE: High speed (de)rail has come to Chicago! I've had my share of speeding tickets, but never for doing 69 in a 10.

Snapping up the marginal riders

The rise in gas prices is causing some people to switch to mass transit:

"It's costing people twice as much per gallon of gasoline today as it did about a year ago, and so the likelihood that more people will look to Metro to get them to work, to meetings or to a ball game is greater now than it was just a few weeks ago," Metro General Manager and Chief Executive Richard White warned, urging commuters to avoid the Metro during rush hour.

Despite the warning, ridership on the Metro during the first two weeks of September was up more than 4 percent from August and more than 10 percent from a year ago.

[...]

In famously car-addicted Los Angeles, ridership on city buses and subways jumped 7.82 percent in August, while ridership on the Metro-Link, the regional commuter rail service for the metropolitan area, rose 6 percent, the largest monthly increase since last November.

Well, congrats for making up for falling behind population growth all those years, guys.

But seriously, factoring in population growth, a 10 percent increase in transit ridership after a year during which gasoline prices nearly doubled? That's pretty lame and mainly due to the fact that for many drivers, mass transit isn't a viable option. It's lamer still (sorry for the 9th Grade vocab, but that's where the transit debate has been stuck for all these years) that the increase in ridership doesn't improve the fiscal picture for transit agencies that are also suffering from high gas and diesel costs.

Agencies lose , riders lose, drivers lose.

Remind me again why Dulles Rail and the Purple Line are still multibillion dollar pipe dreams.

WMATA RAC proposal advances; trivia?

The Metro Board of Directors approved a plan to create a Riders Advisory Council. The panel will consist of six members from the District, Virginia, and Maryland; two at-large members; and one seat for the head of Metro's Elderly and Disabled Transportation Advisory Committee. The Metro Board of Directors will select the RAC members. Supposedly they will select people who rely on a broad cross-section of Metro services and who use Metro for different reasons.

Jack Corbett, a founder of Metroriders.org, seems a bit skeptical. "The kind of ability to review a billion-dollar budget for a 10,000-person agency is not what a normal rider has experience doing," he said. Hmm, it doesn't seem like the board of directors has been very good at reviewing the budget either--and unfortunately at least some of the board has experience with this.

If you're in the DC area, I encourage you to apply! Details should be on the Metro website soon.

Watch riders sound off about Metro. Also, today at work I stumbled across a GAO testimony about oversight of WMATA. And here's a strange Metro trivia question.

No car? Louisiana doesn't care

Apparently the emergency planners for the state of Louisiana could give a rat's ass about poor people who don't have a car:

Other state officials told the committee that the state's pre-hurricane evacuation, which relied on people getting themselves out of danger, worked smoothly.

"Everyone who had desire and means to evacuate did so," said Secretary of Transportation Johnny B. Bradberry.

However, he said, the "plan did not address people without vehicles." Those people were the primary responsibility of local authorities, he said. There was no request for assistance from New Orleans officials, he added.

New Orleans transit water damage

The polluted water that is still filling parts of New Orleans is apparently doing bad things to some of their bus and trolley fleet. I can imagine once they get the vehicles out from the "water" that it will probably take them a while to drive them out, assess the damage, figure out what works and what doesn't, and then actually fix the vehicles. (thanks Matt)

Interestingly, this article talks about how some of the buses were "commandeered" by people to evacuate or just to live and survive in. No mention of the odd idea that someone would decide to take a city bus out for a joy ride in the middle of a natural disaster, as brought up in the New York Times article that Randolph mentioned the other day. (Maybe a reporter misreading the situation? Or the people involved in it?)

Wireless Bus Monitoring

Quick cool news item of the day: Cedar Rapids, Iowa buses now have a mobile broadband system that connects the buses to the Internet, meaning transit officials can now remotely monitor bus security and surveillance cameras. They're also using the networks to stream video entertainment to passengers.

Details at Metro Magazine.

Focus needed in transportation funding

A good commentary from the Hartford Courant on the pork in the recent federal transportation bill and the need for a new focus (rail and transit) in transportation funding.

WMATA to form Riders Advisory Council

It's been mentioned in this space before, but it finally looks certain.

While some of the 12 Metro board members ride the trains, very few ride Metrobus, and only one is a daily rider. All but one Metro board member, Charles Deegan of Prince George's County, have refused to release records documenting the frequency of their travel on the Metro system.

I'm glad this is an issue and it shows that we in D.C. have an excellent transit system that people are expected to use. I mean, in Denver where I'm from, no one even thought to ask whether the elected board rode the bus, and the issue did not even surface in campaigns.

Metro received a public comment: "For example, I believe a Riders Advisory Council could have warned about the absurdity of reducing Metrorail trains to two cars in the evening." True, but I think it's scary we even need a RAC for that. Metro managers could have stood on a platform at night and realized what a stupid idea this was! It would seem to me that they could even have figured out the absurdity of this idea by examining ridership data from the faregates!

Hopefully the RAC will be a check on the occasional ineptitude of Metro managers and board members.

Cameras installed in CTA stations

The cameras will be linked by a fiber-optic network so that authorities may monitor them. Also, watch those CTA fareboxes and turnstiles--sometimes they call people invalids! Well, sort of.

Metro Opens Doors...

...just not always in the right places. Or maybe I should say "Coffee Opens Doors": WMATA officials say that a coffee spill onto the control panel of a new CAF car caused the train to move while the doors were open. A Metro spokeswoman says the system's ban on food and drink extends to train operators. This surprises me, as I have seen more than one train operator consuming snacks while at the helm. Metro says it will discipline the coffee drinker.

While on the subject of inattentive train operators, perhaps the worst offense I saw was an Orange Line operator who was reading a paperback book in the tunnel in eastern D.C. Not all operators are clueless, though: I once noticed a train operator who kept her finger poised above a big red button as the train pulled into stations (trains on automatic sometimes overshoot the platform; hopefully an attentive operator could limit the fallout from such an event.)

In another incident, a train door slid open while the train was in motion; Metro says a broken door spring caused this incident.

In other WMATA news as I catch up on my email backlog (I get email news alerts; you didn't think I actually read several newspapers a day, did you?) Metro detailed a plan for investments in Metrobus, including new buses, better bus stop signage, and real-time bus information displays. Arlington, Virginia has real-time displays, and they're quite nice.

Finally, the Sierra Club's Dennis Jaffe tells me that the Metro's Board of Directors will vote on a proposal that would give the proposed Riders Advisory Council a heavy say in who its staff member will be. Also, if you can swing on by tonight's town hall meeting in College Park, Maryland. Dennis says that, unlike the procedure at past board gatherings, they're allowing unscreened comments. (I once went to a Denver RTD meeting where unscreened comments were a routine agenda item at board meetings; I don't know what they're afraid of...)

High gas prices: a double-edged sword for transit

According to WMATA officials, ridership has surged in recent weeks, and they think high gas prices are the cause. Metro brass are so concerned about overcrowding that they're asking commuters to avoid the peak of the morning and afternoon rush periods. Also, some New York region commuters are trying transit too (thanks Antonio.)

I thought anything that boosts transit ridership is a good thing. Maybe not: CTA officials say high gas prices will force the agency to spend $10 million more than expected this year for fuel. Though farebox revenues are up, they don't cover the increased fuel cost.

We don't need no steenkin' trains

Judging from what I have read so far, I would say that FEMA dropped the ball with hurricane Katrina, but I don't think they even had it to begin with. Senator Mary Landrieu criticized them for not using trains at their disposal:

"When Amtrak offered trains to evacuate significant numbers of victims - far more efficiently than buses - FEMA again dragged its feet. Offers of medicine, communications equipment and other desperately needed items continue to flow in, only to be ignored by the agency."

Oh, that's where the NORTA buses went

From this morning's NYT:

Farther down St. Claude Avenue, where tanks rumble past a smoldering building, the roads are cluttered with vandalized city buses. The city parked them on the riverbank for the hurricane, after which some hoods took them for fare-free joy rides through lawless streets, and then discarded them.

At least someone got some use out of them.

Disasters vs terrorism - nobody wins

Randolph recently wrote about the lack of transit service - or even information or reporting about it - in New Orleans during the hurricane evacuation. Planetizen has an op-ed by a University of Louisiana professor who managed to rent a car and evacuate, but valiantly restrains himself from angrily criticizing the local agencies for having basically crap transit service to begin with, so the people (mainly poor) dependent on non-car evacuation modes were basically screwed from the beginning. Mass transit can and often does play an important part in disaster evacuation and recovery, and this country seems to be very slow in learning that lesson.

I have been looking for information, mostly academic research on transit disaster planning, and an unfortunate side effect of 9/11 is that most disaster planning of the past few years has been focused on terrorist attacks and security issues. Not that this kind of planning was not needed, but we have hurricanes, tornadoes, and earthquakes in this country every year, and their much higher likelihood - and their unfortunately often greater effect on lower income people - has been overshadowed by the fear of terrorism. I am guessing here, but terrorism targets - the ones identified like the stock exchange, the Golden Gate Bridge, airports - probably have "clients" of a higher economic and social class then the ones that are affected by a many natural disasters. As always, follow the money.

I guess we did not need the Federal Emergency Management Agency anyway. I am sure something called the Department of Homeland Security cares just as much about natural disasters as it does about terrorism.

Poconos rail service?

My parents live out in the Poconos, and I live in New York City. I would love to have rail service between these two places, like there was many years ago (my Mom remembers taking it when she was younger). Establishing the connection between New York City and Scranton by rail - it is really a bit too long to drive comfortably with any frequency - would be a great thing for Scranton, which is struggling to reestablish itself as a viable City proper. Northeastern Pennsylvania and North Western New Jersey are beautiful places, service like this could help stem the tide of ugly car traffic.

MBTA collectors

I spent the weekend in Boston and got in a few rides on the T. It seems a labor-intensive system. The Green Line trains (which run as light-rail cars in much of the city) require one operator per car. I'm not sure how much the operator does in cars behind the lead car.

Many of the stations have a "collector," who dispenses tokens. Hand this person $2, and she'll give you one T token and 75 cents in change. I'd think a machine could do this, freeing the human being to watch the station and interact with customers. (Some stations do have machines, which are in various states of repair.)

But then, it seems labor bloat is common in the Northeast. Both the New Jersey and Massachusetts Turnpikes feature humans who dispense tickets, a task performed by machines in parking garages. And in New Jersey, it is unlawful to pump your own gas, which helped create quite a line for gasoline at the stations on the New Jersey Turnpike on Monday.

Port Authority breaks ground on transit center

The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey today launched construction of a transit center at the World Trade Center site.

From the pictures, it looks amazing. There's one thing missing from the pictures though: transit!

Acrobatics on the CTA

Thanks to the CTA tattler, we present you with the story of why acrobatics on a moving train are generally a bad idea.

Link blatently stolen from Courtesty rj3 over at Thrown for a Loop.

At Least They Had a Good View

Gothamist reports that the famous Roosevelt Island tram lost power yesterday, trapping about a hundred people in the air for abou two hours. Apparently, the only engineer who knew how to turn on the backup generator was stuck in traffic in Westchester. The solution? Fly a NYPD helicopoter out to pick him up and bring him down to flip the switch on the backup generator.

I won't even comment on the fact that only one person knows how to turn on the backup generator.

Anyone ever read James Goodman's fantastic Blackout about the cause of the great NYC blackout? If you haven't, I won't spoil the end, but let's just say that it was something as idiotic as that which ended up bringing the entire city to its knees.back in 1977.

WMATA's parking giveaway

I think Washington's Metro is missing out on a big revenue opportunity because it undercharges for parking.

According to Metro's own Web site, suburban parking lots and garages "often" become full by 8:00am. Out of dozens of parking facilities, the site lists only five that generally have parking available all day. I used to live next to a suburban station with parking (Glenmont) and the lot would routinely fill before 8:00am. Those who arrived later would drive around the garage in a fruitless search for a space. Many of the small lots at close in stations, such as Rhode Island Avenue - Brentwood, fill even earlier.

Parkers who don't want to get up so early have another option: reserved parking. These spaces remain available until 10:00am on weekdays. Reserved parking carries a $45 monthly premium. The last time I checked there was no waiting list for reserved parking at lots that fill late, such as Greenbelt. Wait lists at many stations that fill earlier, such as Glenmont, were running over a year long. Only a small number of spaces (certainly less than twenty percent) at each station are reserved.

The parking lots fill early, and reserved parking is in demand, so clearly parking at Metro stations is a scarce commodity. Metro has chosen to allocate these scarce spaces to the people who are willing to get out of bed the earliest.

I have a better idea: let's allocate all the parking spaces to those who are willing and able to pay the most for them. Parking at Glenmont, for instance, is $4.00 per day. This is a bargain. I think parking rates should be hiked to the maximum level that motorists will pay, while still filling up the parking lots. At worst, the impact on Metrorail ridership would be zero: the lots would still be filling up, just later in the morning. At best, ridership would increase, because riders might start to carpool more in order to split the cost of parking.

I acknowledge that those with less money would be the clear losers in a scheme like this. But the additional parking revenue could be used to build more parking. It could also be used to improve bus service so that more people could get to Metro without having to drive. Better bus service would benefit everyone, including those with less money, because they would no longer have to get to the Metro lot well before 8:00am.

At a minimum, reserved parking rates should be hiked dramatically. Year-long waiting lists make no sense. The space should be allocated to she who can pay the most, not to she who can wait a year.

Metro has already shown its willingness to hike parking fees at stations near FedEx Field during game days, so that football fans don't fill the lots up. Parking at two stations on game days will be $25 for non-Metro riders.

Metro should take its FedEx Field logic to the next step. It is time to charge market-rate parking at all lots. This would probably call for large hikes at some lots, while necessitating small cuts at those lots that currently don't fill up. Maybe Metro thinks the early bird should get the worm. More likely, Metro and its board simply have not thought about this issue, or they don't want to face political backlash from hiked parking fees. But I'm all for parking fees that will fill the lots, fill the trains, and fill the coffers too.

BART considers reward credit card

BART is considering launching a reward credit card. Users might get points that they could redeem for free BART rides.

Don't have an account at the Contra Costa Times, or anywhere else for that matter? Try www.bugmenot.com.

"You'll catch plague riding that thing"

So my father said about my daily commutes aboard the Washington Metro. Well a simple solution is at hand: TranStrap. At first this seemed a bit silly to me because I am 5'-10", but I've heard many shorter people complain that they cannot reach the pole that runs along the ceiling of the car. (In DC there are no straps at all.)

A strange silence on New Orleans transit

People have noted nearly everywhere that one of the main factors that contributed to the humanitarian crisis unfolding in New Orleans right now is the lack of options for poor people seeking to evacuate. If you don't have a car and you are worried about getting fired for not returning to work in time after the storm, you're not likely to leave.

Transit agencies are the transportation safety net for millions of people and should thus be at the forefront of preparations and response. So, how come neither Nexis nor Google News find any mention of New Orleans Regional Transit Authority (NORTA)?

The NORTA site is down, but here is a Google cache from last week. There is nothing I can find about emergencies or disasters. At the moment, it's a moot point because the buses are likely underwater by now, but the media's silence on this is both shameful and unhelpful.

WMATA car rolls off with doors open

Yesterday on Metro's Orange Line, a new 5000-series CAF rail car left Metro Center with its doors open. A passenger used the intercom to notify the operator. The train rolled about ten feet before the operator braked it and offloaded the train. Metro is now running all the new cars manually.

The new 5000 cars have been plagued with a number of problems in their electronic systems, including many door problems. I was once aboard a Green Line train when it arrived Greenbelt. The doors opened normally, and people started stepping off. Before opening fully, though, the doors suddenly slammed shut, trapping a woman between them. The doors reversed themselves open again about ten seconds later.

The article leaves questions unanswered. There are red lights on each rail car that illuminate, in the operator's sight, when the doors are open. Were these lights functioning normally? If so they would have alerted the operator to the problem. Also, the article suggests that doors automatically close when trains are run automatically. This is not true--they open automatically, but the operator shuts the doors. How will switching to manual operation solve this problem?

The new cars are less reliable than their 1000-series Rohr counterparts, which are over twenty years old.